I've been working on my how-to-write book again. I revised the tentative topic outline and like this one a lot better, please let me know if you notice that anything is missing or would like to see a particular topic covered! (But not things related to selling and publishing a book, I'm not covering that.) 0. Why do we read, write, and retell stories? What are the psychological and cultural functions of fiction? A. In what specific ways are stories psychologically satisfying? B. What is the historical origin of storytelling, why is it a universal human behavior? C. How do stories function as a kind of magic? D. Stories are a type of language and communicate a meme. 1. What is a story? A. What elements are all stories built out of? B. What is plot? C. Overview of the plot as thematic argument, characters as thematic vectors theory. D. The universal minimal plot structure. 2. What story do you want to tell? Defining your writing goals. A. Genres and emulation. B. Themes and self-analysis. C. Point of View D. Brainstorming favorite characters, tropes, plots E. Circle of story elements and types of writers – where to start. 3. Theme A. What themes are there? Lessons from myth analysis: the fundamental motivation is disphoria, a desire for change. List types of change. B. Survey of theories of theme: basic needs and children's pretend play, 36 basic plots, schemas, personal mythology, stroke theory and problems of socializing, stress and coping behaviors, etc. C. Using theme to brainstorm characters, plot, and worldbuilding. 4. Characters A. Archetypes, personality types, and emotional metabolism. B. Relationships and plot roles. C. Character development arcs: personal growth and romances. D. Survey of character creation checklists and aids. E. Researching and emulating favorite characters. 5. Plot A. What are a premise, a synopsis, and an outline? B. Recap of minimal plot, definition of initial incident, complication, reversal, climax, and resolution. C. Survey of plotting techniques: act structure, snowflake method, provost paragraph, notecards, etc. D. Researching and emulating a favorite plot. 6. Worldbuilding A. Historical evolution of culture types: technology and government. B. Types of religious belief. C. Alien biology, magic systems, future technology. D. Naming E. Creating myths, songs, languages. 7. Putting it together, fleshing it out. A. Keeping track of design decisions: a feature list/statement of purpose. B. The goals of a first draft. C. Revising your character descriptions and synopsis to work in worldbuilding and weave parallel plots, subplots, multiple points of view. D. Scene structure and expanding to a chapter outline. 8. The Beginning A. What's essential in the first 3 chapters? B. Contract with the reader, hooking interest, sympathy, and suspense. C. Introducing the character, the problem, the world. D. Initial incident, backstory, in medias res, prologues, call to action, crossing the threshold. E. Word choice: atmosphere and voices. Clear glass style vs. high style vs. stream of consciousness, also sentence length, vocabulary, and dialect. 9. Rising Action A. Exposition without infodumping, introducing additional characters and factions, deepening development of the characters and world. B. Mysteries, testing, misdirections and stubborn wrongheadedness, complications and reversals, rewards and threats. 10. Dramatic Build-Up and Crisis A. Mysteries and misdirections resolved, finally pursuing the right goal with the right method, the threat gets more and more imperative, the final reward tantalizingly close and desperately desired, factions unified down to two, a last straight push for the goal. 11. The Ending A. The climactic confrontation, the result and the moral of the story, returning to equilibrium, tying up loose ends and resolving character arcs, and happily (or not so) ever afters. 12. Editing A. Content and structure editing vs. copyediting. B. Self-editing techniques. C. Ethics and techniques of trading constructive criticism, writers' groups and workshops. D. Hiring an editor or ghostwriter? E. Revising your synopsis for submission to a publisher.

Duh, how did I manage to forget the last one? o.O


13. Visual fiction, interactive fiction, and fiction generation
A. What works and doesn't work in different media?
B. Pre-created characters vs. avatars.
C. Branching plots.
D. Customizing for the individual reader/player.
E. The hypothetical Island engine.

may I suggest a revision of the title?

How to write can be answered stupidly with "with a pen."-type answers.

But if you managed to capture what you're trying to teach, like "how to write fictional works", "how to create stories" or something equally straightforward, you may be on to something...

*blink* That's not the title of the book - I haven't picked a title yet. I was vaguely thinking that I wanted a short, snappy, and maybe humorous main title, then a long subtitle with lots of search-keyworkd in it that describes what the book is. Something like: _Fiction Is As Fiction Does: A Structuralist Perspective For Writers Who Want To Design Great Stories_. That's not a great title, just my first vague idea.

Quote:

6. Worldbuilding
A. Historical evolution of culture types: technology and government.
B. Types of religious belief.
C. Alien biology, magic systems, future technology.
D. Naming
E. Creating myths, songs, languages.

I think this is completely unnecessary for a serious book. Unless, of course, the intended title of the book is "How you will try and fail at you juvenile attempts to write"

Quote: Original post by slowpid

Quote:

6. Worldbuilding
A. Historical evolution of culture types: technology and government.
B. Types of religious belief.
C. Alien biology, magic systems, future technology.
D. Naming
E. Creating myths, songs, languages.

I think this is completely unnecessary for a serious book. Unless, of course, the intended title of the book is "How you will try and fail at you juvenile attempts to write"

Do you think all science fiction and fantasy are juvenile? That would be a really narrow-minded thing to think. I can't imagine why else you would be opposed to a chapter on how to do worldbuilding though. I personally see worldbuilding as no different from character building; a vivid world is a character which plays an extremely important role not just in science fiction and fantasy but also in horror, historical fiction, folktales and mythology, and any modern fiction built around an imaginary business, estate, or subculture. Understanding some anthropology and sociology is just as essential to being a good writer as understanding some psychology is.

The outline suggests a very didactic structure, which I find worrying given your stated purpose. There are as many ways to tell a great story as there are stars in the heavens.

There's also a major problem of scale. You could easily write an entire book based on your first chapter alone. I think you need to question your motives in attempting this.

There are two elements to good writing: craft and talent. The former is teachable. The latter is not. Chapters on worldbuilding are more sensible in a book on fantasy, science fiction and/or game design. One does not have to perform this process when writing a novel set in the present day or known historical periods.

Chapter 1, "What is a story?", is particularly didactic. I know very successful writers who have diametrically opposite views on how plot comes about:

- One, a strong structuralist, believes it should be written down in detail -- like the design of a piece of software -- with every beat, every twist and turn, every footstep the protagonists take all noted and nailed to the wall.

- The other believes that plot is a natural result of good characterisation and conflict. Place Characters A, B and C in Situation X and the result should be Plot.

Most authors tend to sit between the two, but I should stress that _both_ the above authors are _very_ successful and have both been nominated for awards. There is clearly no "right" or "wrong" way to go about this.

Structuralist authors view Plot as of paramount importance, so there is a strong temptation to modify the world to fit the Plot rather than vice-versa. Hence all those convenient coincidences in those thick, airport bookstore-friendly thrillers. (Yes Dan Brown, I am looking at you.) The Plot is Law and everything is subservient to it. Clearly there are plenty of readers who like the kind of stories this approach produces.

Character-centric authors see characterisation as key. Plot -- they insist -- comes from the way those characters interact with each other and with the world in which they find themselves. Any conflict comes naturally from the characters' interactions with each other and also from their interactions with the world about them.

Other authors treat world-building as key. Arthur C. Clarke is a classic example of a successful writer whose worldbuilding usually takes precedence over character and plot. (Such novels usually contain vast tracts of technical prose verging on thinly-disguised research notes, mainly to prove that, yes, he did in fact research even _this_ particularly anal bit of detail or theory. Sometimes even going so far as to include mathematical formulae.)


It's worth noting that most game designers work in a medium whereby the _player_ tells the story. As a game designer, our role is to provide the player with all the elements necessary to tell an interesting story within the finite limits of a fictional universe. Computers have no concept of the infinite, so finite limits are not optional.

Worldbuilding thus becomes the a process of defining the rules and laws with which all potential stories must abide. Ergo, worldbuilding is key, not characterisation and certainly not plot -- that particular element is up to the player. Read through all the newbie posts about how their new MMORPGRTSFPSETC is going to be so cool and unique and it rapidly becomes obvious that most of these wannabes are basically playing at being god. ("Well, MY world will have trolls with pointy ears and very short wood elves with beards! Now... LET THERE BE LIGHT!")


There is no One True Way to tell a good story, but your outline strongly implies that there is. I would certainly avoid any hint of a "How To..."-type title and maybe focus on the critical analysis or deconstruction aspects instead.

Certainly there are many different writing processes which can result in a great story; there are also many how-to books currently in existence which teach one method or another. I want to write a book teaching my own method because it's different from any of the other methods you can currently read about. I can only write from my own perspective, which is a strongly structuralist one, and it would be a hopeless task to try to please everyone and write something no one objected to. There's nothing wrong with being didactic as long as you're up front about it: this is my own philosophy, it is not for mystics, transcendentalists, or seat-of-the-pants writers, it is specifically for analytically minded people who want to _design_ fiction. This is about construction, not deconstruction. People who want to read that sort of thing may learn from it, while people who disagree with its basic assumptions are free to not read it.

I personally could not write a whole book about the first chapter because that's not the way I think - the kind of scholarly thinking that I do is taking in sources from all over the place, dissecting and condensing them down to essentials, and combining those to create a new system of thought. Thut when I write non-fiction I like to explain the key ideas and how they fit together into a theory, perhaps add an example or suggest an exercise, but that's all - I'm not a detail person, to me dwelling on a topic once these things are accomplished is beating a dead horse. If someone else wanted to do lots of research and write a long book about the subject of my first chapter carefully supporting every little point I would read it, but I would find it slow reading, and it's just not the kind of thing I could write.

I agree that you can't teach talent, only craft. But there are so many different levels of craft that the more subconscious ones, the understanding of principles of design, are often mistaken as talent. That's exactly why I think a structural approach is important - because instead of letting things hide in the dark corners of the subconscious it drags them out into the light where we study them and turn them into tools we can use to accomplish our goals.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Certainly there are many different writing processes which can result in a great story; there are also many how-to books currently in existence which teach one method or another. I want to write a book teaching my own method because it's different from any of the other methods you can currently read about. I can only write from my own perspective, which is a strongly structuralist one, and it would be a hopeless task to try to please everyone and write something no one objected to. There's nothing wrong with being didactic as long as you're up front about it: this is my own philosophy, it is not for mystics, transcendentalists, or seat-of-the-pants writers, it is specifically for analytically minded people who want to _design_ fiction. This is about construction, not deconstruction. People who want to read that sort of thing may learn from it, while people who disagree with its basic assumptions are free to not read it.

Fair enough, but take care when choosing titles. First impressions matter. Not everyone will judge a book by its cover, but people will certainly judge by its title. "How To Write" is a dangerous choice, even if it only goes as far as the title of this thread.

Quote:
I agree that you can't teach talent, only craft. But there are so many different levels of craft that the more subconscious ones, the understanding of principles of design, are often mistaken as talent. That's exactly why I think a structural approach is important - because instead of letting things hide in the dark corners of the subconscious it drags them out into the light where we study them and turn them into tools we can use to accomplish our goals.

"Principles of design"? Is this a book on writing or game design?

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow

13. Visual fiction, interactive fiction, and fiction generation
A. What works and doesn't work in different media?
B. Pre-created characters vs. avatars.
C. Branching plots.
D. Customizing for the individual reader/player.
E. The hypothetical Island engine.

What, exactly, is the target audience for your book? The above suggests it's not just linear storytelling, but branching (and possibly emergent / procedurally-generated) storytelling too. That's a hell of a lot of ground to cover.

There's a danger that you will end up with a very superficial book that doesn't go into enough depth to be truly useful. This book is aimed a broadly similar audience to yours, yet suffers badly from being superficial (and a heavy read), so this isn't a specious criticism.

Flesh out your outline down to Heading 3 level at least. That'll give you a much better idea of whether the outline makes sense in its current form.

Also, do bear in mind that a "bestseller" book in this field might sell, say, 800 or so copies per year. It would make more sense to target the larger, linear fiction author audience first, then repurpose chunks from that book for the non-linear fiction author market.


Finally, please do feel free to prove me wrong. I may be experienced, but I'm not omniscient or prescient. For all I know, you might be the next Chris Vogler.

It's about designing and writing stories - there's no game design involved, unless you consider all interactive stories to be games. The 13th chapter is one I will write, but if the publisher thinks it is inappropriate to include in the book I would agree to leave it out. I intend to market the book as a how-to-write book, in the writing/publishing section of the bookstore, or Dewey Decimal 808 IIRC. So the phrase how-to-write in the thread topic was intended to communicate the type of book I wanted to talk about; it's a phrase I've heard used commonly and without any negative connotation by writers, although I agree it does not belong in the title of my book.

Fleshing out the outline more is indeed the next step. [smile] Something like The Marshall Plan is a pretty good example of my target audience, target length, purpose, etc. so I will hope for similar sales.